The Clarós Foundation makes a new intervention in an old Soviet republic that has opted to open to the West
The Clarós Foundation, founded by the full academician and vice-president of the Governing Board of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED) Pedro Clarós, carried out a new humanitarian mission between the 11 and 18 October. This time it had his field of action in Uzbekistan. A team of the Foundation joined the local staff of the Akfa, Hayat and Olam hospitals in the city of Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, to carry out various training courses and to perform a quarantine of ear, maxillofacial and facial plastic surgeries, as well as perform cochlear implants to recover the hearing of patients with varying degrees of deafness. The Foundation also signed an agreement with the main Faculty of Medicine of the country to collaborate and organize courses of dissection of the temporal bone and other subjects.
Closed for tourism during the decades in which it was part of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan was one of the 15 states that became independent from the USSR in 1991. Since then, the first president of the new republic, Islom Karimov, kept the country isolated until his death in 2016. With the arrival of the current president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the country has opened its borders and has positioned itself internationally thanks to the investments that have allowed its natural resources. The current government has built magnificent hospitals, but there are no frontline specialists. Hence, the Government’s policy is to invite international professionals in all specialties to instruct and train local doctors and specialists.
Established more than two decades ago, the Clarós Foundation has already carried out more than a hundred missions in twenty countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, where it has carried out interventions on neck and face tumours, face reconstructions by traumatisms and tropical diseases and even amputations. Surgeries to which the beneficiaries did not have access. To these missions are added the training scholarships granted to physicians from other countries, with stays in Barcelona of up to six months.
The Clarós Foundation and the RAED signed a collaboration agreement that commits the Royal Academy to sponsor the solidarity actions of the foundation and join actively to the events held in Barcelona and other Spanish cities to publicize their work and obtain funding.
